The word gifted to me this week by a friend was “resurrection”, which I believe was partly to observe Easter and Good Friday. Now this is what we’d call a “heavy” word, with pretty strong connotations, yet it seems incredibly appropriate not only for being relevant to this current week but also within the context of our global pandemic-induced hibernation. We are all clenching, eagerly awaiting a revival or regeneration of our lives and the world around us.
However, here is another meaning for the word: we have lost a lot of musicians to the virus, and also lost other dear artists to disease or affliction during this time. It’s even tougher to hear about the one’s that have departed recently (singer-songwriter John Prine, jazz trumpeter Wallace Roney, Afro-funk legend Manu Dibango) when there is a heightened sense of powerlessness or a reigning sense of disorder that makes the small unexpected news of the early loss of someone an extra amplified feeling of upheaval; this upheaval is probably just the shaking of stable truths we like to think exist for each of us like bedrock. Nevertheless, these days chaos is the unfamiliar and unexpected and it continues to make each and every one of us uncertain of what we can control as well as what we may be able to control in the future.
It might feel small and seemingly insignificant, but we can restore those that have left us every time we celebrate what they accomplished in life. For me this often means celebrating the music as a form of resurrection, or at least a sort of remembrance, and that is something infinite as long as music exists. Cue the Soul and R&B legend Bill Withers.
Bill Withers passed from heart complications during these trying times, at the end of last week. Although it was not from the virus, the music world lost this Soul legend too soon, and this unexpected loss did feel amplified when trapped in a home with an overwhelming sense of detachment from reality. In times like these, the music of someone like Bill Withers is felt, and needed, to even greater degrees. He played honest, heartfelt music that was healing, and some would say redemptive. His music resonated with folks not just because he had great songs written without a hint of conceit or deception, but for also being representative of the genuine article Bill Withers was as a person.
You discover the type of man Bill Withers was when watching the fantastic documentary about his life and music career, “Still Bill”, a 2009 film shared at South by Southwest that year and distributed for wide release in 2010. The documentary takes its name from Bill Withers’ sterling sophomore album Still Bill, released in 1972, and does more to chronicle Bill Withers as a person, and does less of the drifting into the same tired chronicle of the trajectory of a musical career many documentaries fall back on. This is especially important for someone like Withers, who avoided the limelight later in life and only occasionally recorded music after the 1980’s (or touring after a certain point late in his career). He continued to write and make music, mostly for his own sanity and self-satisfaction, but wasn’t interested in producing just for the sake of generating music for money or an esteemed catalogue – to him the music was always personal and had to be an honest form of art stripped of any commercial or corporate intent. At the core, he was a private family man who considered himself just a humble father who happened to play music earlier in life, but was ultimately a good ol’ boy from a small coal-mining town in West Virginia. He never wanted to be a star, or an icon, or a millionaire. He was an extra-sensitive man, like me, and it came through in the songs he wrote, which were as much a salve for the soul as an affirmation of leading an honest and graceful life.
Deciding between his masterpiece debut Just As I Am (1971), followed quickly by the excellent follow-up Still Bill (1972) was a very difficult decision. It seems fitting that both album titles make gesture to the truth of Bill Withers, in that he never compromised his principles and was simply being the most sincere form of himself he could be when crafting music. Both albums capture the genuine nature of his sound, and his voice always seemed to have that uncanny quality of earnestly honest and warm. In the documentary, you come to find his speaking voice, and his personality off the stage, was just as warm, amiable, and unpretentious as conveyed when performing. In fact, it was interesting to find he came to music later than most; he lived a very humble life in his twenties, having enlisted in the military and being stationed in the Pacific, then installing toilets in commercial planes later in his twenties and making living wages in California. He was dabbling in music, mostly doing a little songwriting on the side. He didn’t own a guitar until a couple years before his first album, and didn’t start performing til the age of 32. Even then, he never intended to make music his career, and kept those jobs on the factory floor of Douglas Aircraft with the awareness that the music business is a fickle dame.
However, with a golden voice like Bill’s – so rich and full of grace – it was only a matter of time til that talent pushed him into the fore. And rapidly after he started performing, Sussex Records picked him up, paired him with the legendary producer Booker T. Washington and his talented session bands, and success followed swiftly.
Still Bill does have “Lean on Me”, which captures the concepts of revival and rejuvenation better than any song he recorded. “Use Me” is another R&B/Soul classic, and one of my personal favorites. There is also the beautiful and subdued lovelorn classic “Let Me in Your Life” as well as the underrated back-half of the album, which has tracks like “Another Day to Run” and “I Don’t Know”.
Taken in its entirety, Still Bill leans towards Funk and the more glitzy or accessible aspects of R&B at the time, yet the brilliance of the album is also its ability to balance the popular appeal while still maintaining the honest form of Withers’ musical expression. In short, he never compromises the core of his sound. His soulful and healing voice never diminishes any time during the record, and Withers managed to make a very successful album embraced by fans of Soul and R&B.
However, the pick had to be Just As I Am, because nothing says rejuvenation and revival, or soothes the soul, quite like this album. Taken as a complete record, from beginning to end, Withers’ debut album is calming, and full of a warmth tinged with the Gospel sound he undoubtedly grew up with in church. It’s the salve needed in this time, and an album deserving a celebration of his life and truth of his character. When I think of the resurrection of Bill Withers in its finest, most endearing and humble of forms, this album is the testament.
Again, taking the album in its entirety, it’s one of the finest examples of Folk, Soul, Gospel, and R&B coming together to form a complete album. The standout cuts most of us have heard, like “Ain’t No Sunshine” and “Grandma’s Hands” evince the melding of those musical forms in the most genuine of ways. Both are short and sweet tracks, brimming with an undiluted passion, and maybe a hint of his working-class origins from Slab Fork West Virginia. There are also those odes to the Gospel of the church he grew up embracing. “Grandma’s Hands”, is particularly strong at reaching for those Gospel roots, and is also a soberingly powerful track for capturing modesty as well as a beautiful downtrodden quality. It may be a bit of a contradiction, but the utter lack of pretentiousness in his voice, or in the construction of sound on the record, gives this album both a sense of being grounded and transcendent.
However, my favorite songs on Just As I Am have to be “Sweet Wanomi” and “Everybody’s Talkin'”, featured back-to-back on the front end of the album, tracks 4 and 5. Both have this subdued beauty, a genuine warmth to the vocals, and understated guitar work and backing beat hushed underneath. Every time I listen to “Sweet Wanomi”, I feel a sense of comfort and revival.
The back half of the album represents more of a mix in tone and style. The cohesiveness of the first half is something really lovely to listen to, yet the back half has some really understated classics (such as the beautiful acoustic track “In My Heart”) and novel gems like “I’m Her Daddy” and “Moanin’ and Groanin'”, which are both a bit more upbeat and gritty. Built on a backbone of Blues and Gospel, they both have the penchant Soul voice Bill Withers never betrayed. His cover of the Beatles’ “Let It Be”, much like “Everybody’s Talkin” (a Fred Neil cover) is a really fantastic rendition, given an upbeat Gospel-fied makeover.
Bill Withers is an incomparable voice in Soul music that will always stand apart from his contemporaries. He also influenced future generations of musicians mostly because he was just as he was and never stopped being “Still Bill”. He was a treasure of a man for being genuine above all else. Just as I Am is food for the soul, best played in the waning hours of the day, when dusk creeps in and the light is calm and warm. That’s kind of what I think of when I picture Bill Withers the man and musician: a gentle and honest man, humble and welcoming, a salve for the Soul. That’s worth celebrating and remembering, and resurrecting every time you play this album.
Also a few more video classics! Enjoy, be safe, and be kind to each other.
